Hey, Ham Radio Dopers - new rules?

[Vlad_Igor]

I went to QRZ.com the day after the announcement just to see how the comments were falling. I got disgusted after the third page. I don’t listen to the local repeaters much, so I haven’t heard any comments. However, the KYHAM listserv I’m on has been oddly quiet.

Off topic again, but is anyone interested in an HF QSO party (sorry Techs - unless I can resurrect my Echolink account)? Nothing extended, but just to see how many of us can make contact? I can do phone, PSK, SSTV, and I’d love to make some Hellschreiber contacts.

Vlad/Igor

[Musicat]

[QUOTE=Vlad/Igor]
I don’t listen to the local repeaters much…
[/QUOTE]
Well, OM, that explains the double post.

– ex-K0YBB

[mks57]

I have a General class license. I got a free upgrade from Technician to General when the code requirement for General was reduced to 5 wpm. When I got my Technician license, back in the stone age, I had to go to the local FCC field office and pass a 5 wpm code test and the written test for the General license.

I can’t say that I’m sorry to see the code requirement go. It’s technologically obsolete and an unnecessary barrier to new amateurs. I’m seriously thinking about studying for the Extra class license, now that I can do it without having to waste time on the code requirement.

I would like to see the reserved sub-bands maintained for non-voice modes.

[Quartz]

IIRC ham radio played a very useful role in the Falklands War. Basically, if memory serves, the Argentines forgot to take the sets of some outlying farms, which then supplied the U.K. with useful intelligence. Casdave probably has the full story.

[Vlad_Igor]

[QUOTE=Musicat]
Well, OM, that explains the double post.

– ex-K0YBB
[/QUOTE]
Sorry. That first one was a kerchunk.

[Musicat]

I’m kinda sorry to see the code requirement go. Back when I got my General, there were classmates who had more knowledge than I of radio stuff, but they never got their ticket because they balked at learning Morse. Come, on, guys, it’s not that hard if I can do 13 WPM at age 13 with no previous on-air experience!

[Derleth]

Some links:
The World’s Most Silly Technology Law – One guess which side this is on. Some quotes:

@Bruce Perens K6BP

In the 1920s, ham radio operators could only use Morse code - other technology came later. Voice really only became the most practical mode for long-distance communications around 1950. Until the Vietnam war, the military needed Morse code operators for wartime efforts, and appreciated that hams were ready to be drafted into the signal corps when needed - and many were. But the government requirement for a test on high-speed Morse code, a rather difficult-to-learn art, stems from a decision in the 1930s to make ham radio just hard enough to learn that it would not be overrun by the less competent. The equipment of that time was hard-pressed to sustain a corps of 80,000 active U.S. hams on the available radio frequencies. Over time the technology improved, making it possible to use more frequencies and less bandwidth, and there are half a million or so hams in the U.S. today.

[snip]

Hams fought among themselves [about FCC code rules] because some thought Morse code was essential and that everyone should “pay their dues” by learning it. In the early 90s, there was a perception among some hams that removal of the code requirement would unleash a flood of incompetent “CB-like” operators among hams, but this fear ended as the Internet siphoned off those without a more serious interest in wireless communication.

(BTW, I find the epithet “CB-like” laughable. Hang around Usenet groups, particularly alt.flame, alt.usenet.kooks, and alt.religion.scientology, and find out what being on the wrong end of a signal-to-noise ratio really means. Usenet isn’t a right: It’s a left, a hook, a jab, and a series of vicious kicks to the abdomen.)

A pro-code site makes the following interesting claim I would like expansion on:

@Andrew Roos

The abbreviations and pro-signs used in CW communications make it possible for operators who do not speak the same language to communicate at least basic information. This means that proficiency in English is not a requirement for successfully communicating worldwide using CW, which is an obvious benefit in our attempts to facilitate amateur radio amongst previously disadvantaged communities.

So, for one, how universal are the canned abbreviations and pro-signs? Can they be used between people who don’t even share a common written language? Second, how far do they go? Is it basic location and call sign only, or can you get more than just a DX card out of it?

[Derleth]

[QUOTE=Derleth]
Can they be used between people who don’t even share a common written language?
[/QUOTE]
I meant to say: “Can they be used between people who don’t even share a common writing system?” That is, can an Arabic speaker and a Chinese speaker successfully use them?

[Musicat]

[QUOTE=Derleth]
I meant to say: “Can they be used between people who don’t even share a common writing system?” That is, can an Arabic speaker and a Chinese speaker successfully use them?
[/QUOTE]
Of course. That’s one reason they were designed, IIRC. The other was just to shorten transmissions by coding commonly-used expressions into a 3-letter shorthand. Unless you have a dynamite fist, Morse transmissions are slow compared with spoken conversations.

Q-code list.

These codes are used in two ways. With a “?” following, they ask a question. Otherwise, they answer one. “QTH?” means “Where are you?”, “QTH FRANCE” means you are broadcasting from France.

[Musicat]

Here’s a little better Q Code list.

and

http://www.squidoo.com/qcodes/

http://www.indiana.edu/~k9iu/q_signals.html

Note that most codes don’t have an “exact” interpretive wording, but they get the point across and could be easily translated into foreign spoken languages. Sometimes they are twisted to mean similar things, like QRP, which means “decrease your power”, has become the name of the specialized hobby of seeing just how small a transmitter you can make and still communicate the longest distance. As you might imagine, Morse works much better for QRP than voice.

[Derleth]

@Musicat

Of course. That’s one reason they were designed, IIRC.

“Of course” nothing. Morse code is a monoalphabetic cipher. Why would it work the same way in languages that don’t share our alphabet, such as Arabic, or languages without an alphabet, such as Chinese? How does Morse code work in Chinese, anyway?

“QTH FRANCE” means you are broadcasting from France.

But that’s in English. Wouldn’t a monolingual French ham respond in French?

[wonky]

[QUOTE=Derleth]
“Of course” nothing. Morse code is a monoalphabetic cipher. Why would it work the same way in languages that don’t share our alphabet, such as Arabic, or languages without an alphabet, such as Chinese?
[/QUOTE]

According to my husband, the simple answer is: It doesn’t.

The more complex answer is that there is more than one “Morse code,” but that the majority of the people learn international Morse code, which uses English letters and the majority of the hams learn at least enough English to get by.

He thinks there is a Morse code for Russian and Chinese, but he’s not certain.

[Malienation]

[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
According to my husband, the simple answer is: It doesn’t.

The more complex answer is that there is more than one “Morse code,” but that the majority of the people learn international Morse code, which uses English letters and the majority of the hams learn at least enough English to get by.

He thinks there is a Morse code for Russian and Chinese, but he’s not certain.
[/QUOTE]
Yup, there are “alternative” Morse codes, but they aren’t really commonly used. Languages available. Notice there’s no Chinese; frankly, I dunno how that would work without romanization (in that case, International Morse Code would do). There’s also the obsolete “American Morse Code”, aka “Railroad Morse Code”, so used by the railroads.

[Musicat]

[QUOTE=Derleth]
“Of course” nothing. Morse code is a monoalphabetic cipher. Why would it work the same way in languages that don’t share our alphabet, such as Arabic, or languages without an alphabet, such as Chinese? How does Morse code work in Chinese, anyway?But that’s in English. Wouldn’t a monolingual French ham respond in French?
[/QUOTE]
Having corresponded with hams residing in many different countries, probably speaking many different languages, I know that if I sent the Morse code for “what is your location?” as a Q-code, or “QTH?”, I’m 100% sure I would get back something that told where he was broadcasting from.

Again, that’s one of the reasons for the 3-letter Q codes. You might be amazed at what can be covered with a universal language. Not only are Q codes universal, but many other letters and letter combinations work. “K” means to start transmitting (like “over”), “R” means “received without error”, “OM” means “Old Man”, or any male operator, and “XYL” means your wife (eX-Young Lady, get it?) You can get by pretty well with a limited vocabulary if everyone understands it.

And English has always been the International language of the airwaves, or the nearest thing to it. I confess I never talked to any Chinese by CW; I’m not even sure their government would have allowed it years ago.

Here’s an example. What language is the native one for each operator?
CQ CQ CQ CQ DE K0YBB K
K0YBB DE K0AZV/9 K
K0AZV/9 DE K0YBB R57 FB OM QTH ST LOUIS MO QTH? K
K0YBB DE K0AZV/9 R55 QTH MOLINE IL TX QRP MOBILE QRS QRS WX? K
R WX CLR 10C QRU? K
QRU QSL? 73 K
K0AZV/9 DE K0YBB QRX 0400 GMT 73 QRT
…which means, in plain English:

CQ (international code for “Anyone listening? I’ll talk to anybody!”) DE (from) K0YBB (my call sign) K (over)

K0AZV here, away from home base. Talk to me, over.

Receiving you 5 by 7 (pretty good signal) Fine Business, Old Man (here’s a handshake, good buddy) and I am in St. Louis, Missouri. Where are you? Over.

Receiving you 5 by 5 (fair signal), I’m in Moline, Illinois on a portable unit out of my native call area (licensed in 0 territory, transmitting in 9-land). I’m using a flea-powered (low-powered) transmitter (TX QRP). Slow down (QRS), you’re sending too fast! How’s the weather in your neck of the woods? Over.

Received OK. Weather here is clear, 10 degrees Centigrade. You have any traffic for me? Over.

Nope, no traffic (messages) this time. Send me a postcard confirming this conversation, will ya? Best Regards (73), over.

I’ll call you again at 0400 international time. Best Regards, and I’m out.

[Derleth]

@Musicat

And English has always been the International language of the airwaves, or the nearest thing to it.

This is what I suspected. There aren’t nearly enough Q codes even to relay place names, so people fall back on a natural language to fill the gaps. That said, it’s surprising what you can do with the codes. That conversation looked fairly dense.

@jsgoddess

The more complex answer is that there is more than one “Morse code,” but that the majority of the people learn international Morse code, which uses English letters and the majority of the hams learn at least enough English to get by.

Again, I thought so.

He thinks there is a Morse code for Russian and Chinese, but he’s not certain.

Russian Morse code is trivial because they have an alphabetic writing system just like we do. From a Googling, the Chinese system seems somewhat cumbersome: They number each character (a four-digit number, about 9800 in total) and send the numbers. Cite.

As a sidenote, that cite blithely states the characters in the Chinese number lookup tables are in “dictionary order.” This little page makes me wonder how much that really means. From the cite:

As a working Sinologist, each time I look up a word in my Webster’s or Kenkyusha’s I experience a sharp pang of deprivation Having slaved over Chinese dictionaries arranged in every imaginable order (by K’ang-hsi radical, left-top radical, bottom-right radical, left-right split, total stroke count, shape of successive strokes, four-comer, three-comer, two-corner, kuei-hsieh, ts’ang-chieh, telegraphic code, rhyme tables, “phonetic” keys, and so on ad nauseam), I have become deeply envious of specialists in those languages, such as Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Vietnamese, and so forth, which possess alphabetically arranged dictionaries Even Zulu, Swahili, Akkadian (Assyrian), and now Sumerian have alphabetically ordered dictionaries for the convenience of scholars in these areas of research

But that’s tangential.

There is a proposal to develop a phonetic Morse code which would require fewer strokes. Here.

[Kevbo]

I passed the extra back in '83 when the FCC administered the test, and it was 20 WPM.

As for code, it can be pretty fast and natural when you have two ops that can run 30 wpm or so, and abbreviate well and appropriately.

Where it really shines is when you are passing third party traffic (like, say a message from a FEMA worker to thier boss). In this case, with voice, you end up using lots of phonetics to spell out names and such, where code does that by default. And with voice you can only go as fast as the rx op can write anyway. Seasoned CW traffic operators can probably move at least 50% more messages in a given amount of time vs. voice operators.

I’ve also seen ops who could copy 4-5 call signs sent simultaneously in a DX pile up. (not me) Pretty much impossible with voice.

Digital modes these days are probably superior though.

Hurricane Andrew was a big wake up call for emergency services. Red Cross decided that hams were redundant what with them all having cell phones and all. Well, Andrew took out all the cell towers, and what was left was clogged with everyone trying to check on Uncle Joe and Aunt Ruthy.

As for squeaks and squeals: On the low bands, that is what you will hear if you don’t have a communications grade receiver. “Shortwave” receivers often lack appropriate detector circuits for SSB, and CW, and even then, do not tune to fine enough resolution (10 Hz is ideal) to properly tune in a signal that is not “channelized” to 10Khz spacing. (as broadcast stations are). A shortwave receiver typically has a 20Khz pass band, while a ham receiver has a 2.5Khz bandwidth (give or take) for voice, and perhaps a 200Hz bandwidth for code. The excess bandwidth allows lots of interference (man-made and natural) to pass, interfering with reception. Many ham receivers include general coverage provisions so they can receive shortwave broadcasts OK, but the reverse seldom applies.

I’ll speak for a lot (though not all) of old farts and say that there is a strong feeling that the code requirement had a lot to do with the difference between the ham bands and the CB band. It was a hoop we wanted the newbies to jump through in order to keep some of the riff-raff out. Much like spelling, grammar, etc. mark the distinction between the SDMB and Internet message boards in general. Sure it’s elitism.

[Derleth]

[QUOTE=Kevbo]
I’ll speak for a lot (though not all) of old farts and say that there is a strong feeling that the code requirement had a lot to do with the difference between the ham bands and the CB band. It was a hoop we wanted the newbies to jump through in order to keep some of the riff-raff out. Much like spelling, grammar, etc. mark the distinction between the SDMB and Internet message boards in general. Sure it’s elitism.
[/QUOTE]
All the kids and loons have Internet access now. I don’t think the ham bands have anything to worry about.